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ping is the amount of time for a chunk of data to go from your comp, to the server and back, you can increase your bandwidth to 1000000mb/s but your ping will stay the same.

the bandwidth amount will reduce the lag during intense data transfer, such as downloads, lots of players in a game of UT3, or even just browsing the web. it will not however reduce the slight latency you get in a game.

you can change the service provider, or the type of service (cable/dsl/fiber optic/etc) to change the ping (need to do research to find out which one is the fastest in your area)
but even then, your ping is half based on who is hosting the game/download/website. so the change may not even be noticeable.

To reduce ping you need to make sure that
-you have a good router
-good quality cables
-A top quality faceplate to filter the phone and data trafic.
-Interleave off
-An ISP that caters for low latency, and minimises the number of internal hops.

If you use BT in the UK, it'll esnd your signal through internal intermediaries - and the whole signal from your PC to the server will be 14 hops.

If you use a smaller more specialist provider, there will be only 8 or so hops, which is a lot better.

I mostly play in the mornings, so most servers that are active are usually from another country, and thus high ping.

Is there a way to reduce ping? I just upgraded from 5 Mbs/s to 16 Mbs/s on my cable modem and I don't notice any change in ping?

Who is your provider? Cable is slower than fiber optics. Sometimes there is small print on service that states, "this is a best effort service for connection quality and speed." If many users are on the same line, it slows everything down if the providers network is poor. Can you try another provider? Is FIOS available in your area?

Make sure your system is fast enough to make ping matter. Does it play well in instant action?
Make sure your LAN driver is up to date, integrated LAN on many boards has been an issue.
Make sure your not running any background processes including antivirus, spyware, and spambots.
Make sure your cable modem is new, fast, and on the list of supported modems.

Before GameSpy went dark I played as [T5K]Bobba_Novis, {T5K}Bobba_Novi, Gi_96, Ph@t-Ass-Fr3d, infected_brains, and {T0std}
My Rig- ASUS Z68, core I7 2600K @4.2Ghz and GTX780 as seen on my VG248 @144Hz

this is the whole advantage of so called client side games - your computer is the one that registers whether or not you hit the opponent not the server in client side. The big problem with client side is its so easy to hack a cheat! Thus Epic chose server sided hitscan. In the end its the right choice but makes ping super important. I have similar problems at times - the guys playing on a t3 line almost always rule. OTOH it can give you some advantage if you continuously hop about your lag effects where your opponent sees you so they also have a hard time hitting you. When ping is high try warfare maps as everybody is lagging on a full warfare server making it more fair.
P.S. if you can get in touch with the game server sysad they can get mods that add ping to everyone to even things out but lots of folks hate this.

This generally won't help that much either: your connection has to go from your system to your ISP to his ISP to him and back. Depending upon the routing that your and his ISP are using, it is possible to get lousy (or good) pings even to your next door neighbor.

Routing is everything and not merely the number of hops between source and destination. If there is a bottleneck in the routing somewhere along the way, you're screwed no matter what you or your ISP do. One of our clan members in Houston, TX, has been contending with crappy routers in Dallas for years now.

I've been telling him that faster broadband, changing ISPs, etc won't help -- he needs to nuke Dallas, so the Houston routing will bypass it. Being a redneck TX Republican, he keeps focusing on guns as his "right to bear arms" instead of nuclear armaments, as are appropriate in this case. As a UT player, he should know that guns are so 18th century, but as a Republican he thinks the new fangled invention called the wheel is the devil's work.

another yet drastic way to reduce ping which no one has mentioned yet is to simply rent your own game server as close to home as possible (prob chi town for you) BUT, thats not all of it. you also would want to rent from a "higher end" server rental company which does not limit the server tic rate. Renting from these company's is more money, but in the end you get a much better quality server, along with the fact that you will be able to set your server tic rate how ever you want. 99% of all ut3 server are running at 30 tic rate, and are locked in at this number, if you greatly increase your tic rate, the ping will go down.

but like i said, thats a drastic way, and really only recommend it if you have a and or are in a clan.

If your not currently using a router, adding one will not help.
If you are currently using a router, you can test if it is slowing you down by removing it and connecting your game box to the cable modem.
If you are currently using a router, you should disable your windoze firewall to see if that helps. You do not need 2 firewalls and the windoze software firewall itself should not give you a warm fuzzy feeling in any case.

Before GameSpy went dark I played as [T5K]Bobba_Novis, {T5K}Bobba_Novi, Gi_96, Ph@t-Ass-Fr3d, infected_brains, and {T0std}
My Rig- ASUS Z68, core I7 2600K @4.2Ghz and GTX780 as seen on my VG248 @144Hz

I'm also bugged by ping times since I moved to my parents place for the summer and have a crappy ADSL 512/512Kbit line atm and I called my ISP to turn off "interleaving" mode and it only helped a little like 10 ~ 20 ms. I have 1/1Mbit fibre when I study and live at a dorm and always had nice ping on almost any european servers, even fast UK servers provided ~60 ping in UT3 despite I live in Finland.

With this DSL connection the ping times quickly rise depending on distance, seems Finnish and Swedish servers would probably give me a good ping (dunno really cuz haven't seen any lately) and some NL servers might give 75 or so but then it's almost impossible to get below 100 ping currently, often I play with 100 - 150 ping on european servers now when being used to 60 - 100 ping on the same servers.

Now friends tell me "fullrate" might improve ping since my friends with this fullrate adsl speed 8/0.8Mbit (and some 24/1) have usually better ping than me and think the ISP uses another better "routing" and equipment for fullrate users. If that's the case then I guess it could be plausible... I get 30 ms ping for pinging the ISP servers currently and around 40 ~ 45 ms most often pinging some random finnish DNS's and IPs and for instance NL IPs around 70. But then it usually adds a lot more ping when playing a game online too.

It bugs me seeing people with as low as ~35 ping in UT3... if I had that I'd hit almost everytime. A couple of days ago I managed to get around 70 ping on a 100Mbit NL server and I was like "omg it's so much easier to hit again". Spammed with shock rifle almost all the time since even primary fire seemed to hit like 7 out of 10 times. lol At >80 ping it's noticable more difficult to hitscan and at >100 it's like you start prioritizing other weapons... I yet wonder how it would be like playing with <50 ping if I get superb aim already with 60 ~ 70 ping.

For pub gaming I'm fine with this ping but for competitive playing on pugs or clan matches it sux with 100+ ping really but luckily I'm playing Warfare and vCTF mostly where you can do fine despite you suck at 1 on 1 fights due to sucky aim due to high ping. Really takes a lot of fun out of it, already missing my fibre connection. :/

Nah . Stay away from Linksys stuff ... Had only problems in the past - and support is as bad as ... (no comment).
Get yourself a decent Netgear (DG834GT RouterModem b.e.) which is amazingly fast, easy to setup, and very reliable.
I have another setup here - as I build up my INternet connection equipment myself with spare parts found outside - however people asking me to help them setup their Internet access - I put that modem (B Model - for German ADSL). With linksys devices - I did spend rather often my evenings at their homes... Since they have the Netgear Modem-Routes - I see them to drink a glass of wine

Spent some time yesterday trying to get my DSL account switched to fastpath. My ISP tells me there's some kind of funny attenuation on my line and they can't get fastpath to work because of it.

The phone company swears their wires are OK and I just have a single piece of CAT6 going straight out to the box.

I guess it's not to be.

The Splitter boxes the telco companies provide are also a source of bad line quality. I have a 18Mbit/1Mbit ADSL Connection on my place - while my neighbour only manages to get roughly 6MBit - ADSL 1 connection. ADSL2+ shokes out immediatly. Did give him a new Splitter (Had some hanging around) and suddenly he could get 14MBit ADSL2+

So - check you have good quality hardware all along the path.
When I'm lucky - I get 45ms on the servers...

The Splitter boxes the telco companies provide are also a source of bad line quality. I have a 18Mbit/1Mbit ADSL Connection on my place - while my neighbour only manages to get roughly 6MBit - ADSL 1 connection. ADSL2+ shokes out immediatly. Did give him a new Splitter (Had some hanging around) and suddenly he could get 14MBit ADSL2+

So - check you have good quality hardware all along the path.
When I'm lucky - I get 45ms on the servers...

Well, I messed around, disconnected absolutely everything off the circuit. Connected the modem directly to the box with 1 CAT6 wire, nothing else hooked up at all. Modem kindly informs me my SNR margin is about 10, Local Attenuation is 57.5 (down from 58 when I started. Yes all my efforts brought it down a whole 0.5 apparently). And so on.

Talked to tech support again. They said the phone company might be able to switch me to fastpath, but they'd probably knock my download speed down in the process, possibly to something really awful, like 3 hundred some odd. Heck it's only 8 hundred and something now, on good days.

I'm just going to live with it. Probably the only thing I could do to improve this situation is switch to cable, and I hate the cable company. Also my ISP throws in a great usenet server.

On ADSL Lines - there is a feature called FastPath - which drastically improves the ping times. ISP's usually charge for it in Europe though.

Fast-Path Compared

I am in western North Carolina. DSL around here is always set up with "Interleave," which increases pings but has built in error correction. You have to go to the right ISP techie to convince them to switch you to Fast-Path, which has better pings but lacks the error correction. (they have to clear you based upon line noise or you will have instability.) I now have fast-path running on my DSL. Here is a comparison between ping times with Embarq Interleave, Embarq Fast-Path, and Charter Cable Internet (at its fastest). All numbers from speedtest.net.